Hurricane Hype

The Giro coming back across the still-open Hwy 90 floodgate.

It was an emergency, an imminent disaster, the end of life as we know it. At least, that's what it sounded like on Friday. The mayor put on his disaster costume (as if he was out there filling sandbags himself) and got onto television with his entire entourage behind him - Disaster Response, Sewerage and Water Board, Police Chief, etc., etc. He imposed a city-wide curfew to which I knew nobody would pay the least bit of attention. I had been following the storm for days via spaghettimodels.com and was pretty sure this wasn't going to be much of a disaster. Of course, there's always the possibility of a tornado, or just having some old termite-damaged part of the house collapse, but at the worst I was expecting maybe one day without electricity and a few tree branches on the ground.

The price of riding Chef Highway through Gentilly.

Hurricane Nate was supposed to make landfall late Saturday night. I immediately began making plans - for how we would get in our weekend training rides. On Friday they started closing floodgates, of which there were many. The Giro Ride crosses two floodgates on the way out and three on the way back, so it was by no means certain that we'd be able to do the usual route. Putting some faith in the city's sluggishness to do anything, however, a big group rolled out from Starbucks at 7 am anyway. We figured that the floodgates at the lakefront would be closed already (they were), so we headed out down Robert E. Lee to Leon C. Simon, and from there it was the usual Giro out to Chef Highway. The Highway 90 floodgate was open, so we rode hard out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles (which was under an evacuation order with the streets already under water because the lake was so high from two days of strong southeast winds). On the way back we again made it through the open Highway 90 floodgate, but by the time we got to the Casino bridge near Lakefront Airport there was a police car blocking the overpass. The floodgate at Dowman Road was already closed, so we had to detour to the Highway 90 bridge, which meant riding back in to town on Chef Highway, which is not a whole lot of fun because of stop lights and traffic and sketchy roads. Matt flatted. Twice. Even so, I was only a few miles short compared to a normal Giro, so that was good.

By the time I got home it was already looking like the hurricane, which was moving at the unheard-of speed of 25 mph, was going to come ashore somewhere in Mississippi. Of course, nobody was making any promises, so much of the day was spent watching local newscasters and Weather Channel people kill time with painfully repetitive talk. They were doing their best to make something big out of the story, but the reality was that this was going to be a fairly minor hurricane, as hurricanes go, and since it was moving so quickly, the effects would be minimized even more. By early evening it was obvious we were going to miss out on all of the excitement. I went downstairs and cleaned the bike and started thinking about Sunday morning. Around midnight, when I was sound asleep, the hurricane finally came ashore around Biloxi as a Category 1. Basically they had about 30 minutes of significant wind and some flooding. It was a bit worse to the east around Mobile where there were more power outages, but in general this storm was more of a nuisance than anything else.

Nice weather for Sunday's ride out to the Spillway.

As it turned out, we never got much rain, or wind even. Nothing even approaching a normal summer afternoon thunderstorm, really. The power never went out, the streets never flooded, the party on Bourbon Street never stopped. I felt strangely disappointed even though I had made only the most minimal of preparations. I took the fern plant and chair cushions inside from the front porch and put the barbecue pit in the garage. Candy had taken the opportunity to stockpile food and water and after work on Friday we'd made a special trip to Whole Foods on Broad to buy more water. I have no idea why. We could survive for weeks just on the wine, beer and soft drinks already in the house. Anyway, I sent out a FB post Saturday evening to the Tulane group, and later to the NOBC group, saying I'd be riding the levee at 7 am on Sunday since I was pretty sure that various lakefront floodgates would still be closed and that Lakeshore Drive would probably be pretty wet.

Sunday morning Elliot, Jerry and Grayson showed up and we did a really nice ride up the river to the Spillway and back, which got me around 55 miles, so I felt satisfied with that even though it would turn out to be one of the lowest mileage weeks I'd had in a while. It wasn't even particularly windy. I spent the afternoon trimming hedges and trees at home, from which my back will probably not recover until Wednesday.

Ride it Out

Nice weather for the Friday morning Coffee Ride.

The weather this morning for the Friday Coffee Ride was so very nice. It was likely the last nice weather we'll see for a few days, though, because Tropical Storm Nate is making a bee-line for New Orleans right now, and doing so at 21 mph. This morning there was a pretty brisk ENE wind blowing, but the sky was clear and air was reasonably cool and dry. I would have liked to have ridden for another couple of hours since I'm going to be really mileage-deprived this week.

On Wednesday I rushed out of work a few minutes early, rode home, jumped in the car, and drove up to Baton Rouge to officiate the first race of the Track series at the velodrome. There was a healthy turnout of 23 riders and some really close finishes in the match sprints. Even with just 200 meter TTs for qualifying and then the double-elimination match sprints, I wasn't back home until around midnight. Then on Thursday I had to go right back to Baton Rouge for a morning meeting at the Board of Regents and didn't ride at all. These things always seem to happen this time of year.

I am hoping to get in a ride tomorrow morning, possibly some version of the Giro Ride, depending on which floodgates have been closed by then, but by midnight on Saturday it should be pretty much on top of us, possibly as a Category 1 hurricane by then. As hurricanes go, Category 1 isn't generally all that bad, but it's nothing to ignore either. Right now we're planning on being back at work as usual on Monday. At any rate, I expect that most of Saturday will be spent battening down whatever hatches we can at home, depending on how the situation looks at that point, and then "hunkering down" for the duration. I don't know who invented the term "hunkering," but I've never been able to come up with a more elegant way of saying what we do when we decide to ride out a hurricane at home. It's really more like waiting for the power to go out and then just hoping the roof doesn't get blown off.

Not Over Yet

October is always a transition month - on multiple levels. The last LAMBRA road race was last weekend, but really that just opens up the calendar for a whole string of "it's not a race" races, the Track Series, and of course the impending cyclocross season. I remember back when late October and early November constituted the "off" season. For a number of years I'd cut back a bit on riding and start doing a little running, entering various little local 5k type races and collecting T-shirts.

Yesterday I spent the whole day at home because the A/C had gone out (again) and I had to wait for the service guys. It turned out that some components on the condenser circuit board had gotten fried, shorted out, and therefore the system thought the refrigerant pressure was too high and shut down the compressor. That little glitch, along with topping up the refrigerant that is apparently leaking very slowly, cost just a hair under $1,000. If the leak gets worse I'll probably be looking at something more like $4,000. This is why I can't have nice things, like race wheels less than ten years old.

So there's another Tropical Depression about to enter the Gulf now. Hurricane season doesn't officially end until the end of November, but generally if we can get through September things start to settle down considerably. This one, which is still going by "TD-16," is expected to become a Tropical Storm shortly and could make it up to Hurricane status by Sunday when it should be coming ashore around Alabama and the Florida panhandle. If it actually sticks to that track we will be on the "good" side, which means north and northeast winds.

This morning the WeMoRi was finally back to its original route, or at least mostly its original route, now that the Wisner Overpass, closed since December of 2015, has been re-built and re-opened. I rode out there a little early, and since I could now go straight up Wisner to the lake I hit Lakeshore Drive considerably earlier than usual. It was super-windy as it's been for the past couple of days, and the lake was really high - up to the top two steps on the seawall - because of the consistent east winds. I was actually just a couple of minutes behind the group, which was apparently taking its time riding into the headwind. I rode all the way down to Elysian Fields, turned around, rode all the way down to Marconi, and still couldn't see the group. I rode back a minute or two and then finally saw the group coming over the levee a the Swim Hole, so turned around again and made it to the turn onto Marconi just as the breakaway came flying by. I jumped onto the last rider, gasping and wheezing and drooling as one does when going from 14 mph and 85 bpm to 27 mph and 150 bpm in half a mile.  Suffice it to say I was already gassed as we turned onto Robt. E. Lee. The small breakaway group of maybe eight started coming apart at the turn onto Wisner and two of us were spit out the back. I was still trying to catch my breath and couldn't do much except hang on for dear life. A couple more guys came out of that break, and we saw Eddie C. at the base of the overpass putting his chain back on, but we never caught the lead group. I'd been hoping that after sprinting to the top of the overpass, and then again on City Park Avenue, they would ease up after the turn onto Marconi, but no such luck. Back on Marconi we were thankfully absorbed by the main group around Harrison Avenue. There was coffee and cake for the group at Robert's grocery since it was a "birthday ride."

This evening I'm going to have to hustle to get over to Baton Rouge to officiate the first race of the Wednesday night track series. Given the rush-hour traffic, I'll be lucky to get there by 6:30 (it starts at 7:00) even if I can get out of the office a little early. My regular track bike is out on loan to Jerry, so I'm thinking about bringing the old Viner with me so I can ride a few laps, although the tires on that bike are about twenty years old, so I won't be doing anything dramatic on them. I'm more concerned with the base tape separating from the casing than from the rim. I pumped them up yesterday and they seem OK, but you never know. If I'm really pressed for time this afternoon I may end up leaving the bike at home anyway.

On Sunday I'll probably go up to St. Francisville for the annual collegiate ride. It's also the annual MS Tour weekend, so I'm sure some people will be doing that.

Up to S'port

The Sunday Giro coming down the Casino bridge onto Hayne Blvd.

After eighteen hours of driving the prior weekend, I was kind of dreading the 5-hour drive up to Shreveport for the Rocky Mount Road Race. On the other hand, I've always liked the course up there, even when it's kicked my butt. The race had originally been scheduled as a Stage Race back in May, but was cancelled at the last minute because of severe weather. I was glad that they had quickly decided to re-schedule it, even though it was ultimately shortened to just the Road Race. Given the late date on the calendar, that made a lot of sense because a low turnout was to be expected. A couple of days earlier I had installed a new set of Campi Record shifters to replace the old Super-Record ones that, by then, had at least 55,000 miles on them and were pretty worn out with broken return springs and generally sloppy action. It was quite a change to have shifters that actually shifted immediately and with a reassuring click!

Fortunately, I was able to leave work early and was on the road by 4 pm or so, not that it saved me from being stuck in traffic heading out of New Orleans and then again coming into Baton Rouge. I was travelling alone, so between the satellite radio and Spotify, and the fact that I wasn't in any particular hurry, it was a relatively easy drive if you ignore how much my back was hurting by the time I arrived. Naturally, when I got to the hotel they were checking in an entire high-school basketball team. Then my room key didn't work so I had to go back down to the desk to get them re-coded. I put the bike and the bag in the room and then went down the street and was that lonely looking guy eating dinner alone at Burger King.

I was up early Saturday morning and enjoyed a relaxed cup of coffee at the Starbucks near the hotel (frankly, that was a major factor in my choice of hotels) before making the half-hour drive up to the road course at - you guessed it - Rocky Mount, Louisiana, which consists of an intersection with a small school, two houses, and an abundance of insect life. Thanks to the 9:30 am start time, the officials were all there early as well, so I got the radio base station set up, handed out a few of the handhelds to the EMS and lead vehicles, dropped off my spare wheels, and rode a couple of easy miles before my 10:10 am start. Despite the expected small turnout, the LaS'port team had everything well under control with lead and follow cars, a couple of moto-refs, police at the intersections, etc.

The Master 55 race would be three laps of the rolling 21-mile course, and with ten riders at the start, ours was actually one of the largest of the day. I have no idea why people don't seem willing to make the effort to go to organized races lately, especially the well-established ones with nice prizes and good organization. The LaS'port folks even had food for everyone after the race. Anyway, looking at the riders around me I realized that I was once again rather badly outnumbered. Six of the ten riders were from the LaS'port team, unless you count Tim Perry who rides for Ft. Wayne Outfitters who lives right down the road and is practically a LaS'port teammate as well. For the past few years Tim has been focused on time trials, and just this year has won his age group at the state championships in Louisiana/Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, and Missouri, and also won the National TT Championship. So you can probably guess what his race strategy was. I was coming into this race feeling still a little tired from 6 Gap, but was determined to make it a workout regardless.

The first lap was pretty steady, although I was pushing the pace a bit on the climbs. Master's races sometimes get really slow, and I just wasn't in the mood for it I guess. Around the end of the first lap Tim attacked and opened a gap that we closed fairly quickly. He attacked again a while later and that resulted in only two of us making it across. Although I knew Tim would eventually take off on a 30 mph time trial, I liked the group of Tim, Grant and me and when we came together said, "let's keep this together!" The next lap and a half was a nice 3-man rotation. Tim was obviously soft-pedaling when he'd come to the front and was going up the hills particularly slowly. I knew there was a group chasing us, so I didn't want the pace to lag too much. I also knew that Tim probably didn't care if we were caught or not since he was probably going to launch a decisive attack on one of the bigger hills on the second half of the loop and drop everyone anyway. Of course, that's exactly what happened about seven miles from the finish. Grant and I were starting to hurt, and when Tim went flying past me about five mph faster all I could do was shake my head and make a feeble and largely unsuccessful attempt to match his pace. Grant and I traded pulls the rest of the way in. I jumped at about 200 meters to go and immediately felt my calf muscle start to cramp. I'd caught him a bit by surprise and had a nice gap, but when I glanced back I could see him gaining on me so I had to accelerate again, just barely making it across the line in time.

I was pleasantly surprised how good I'd felt in this race. I'd been expecting the effects of 6-gap to still be lingering like they had been for most of the week, but I guess the easy ride on Friday gave them that final bit of recovery time they needed.

I rode out to the Giro Ride this morning in a pretty stiff ENE wind, knowing that the wind and moderate threat of rain, along with other things going on in town, would make for a small group. Jaden was there, though, so things were reasonably fast and although my quads were complaining a bit from Saturday's thrashing I was otherwise fine. Granted, I spent a lot of time sitting on the back of the group, especially on the way back when the speeds got fast because of the tailwind. By the time I got close to home I could feel a light rain starting to fall. I'd been planning on riding with the Tulane Sunday Social group at 10:30, but by then it was genuinely raining so I called it a wrap for the week at 284 miles.

Ten of Six

The usual last-minute photo before heading down to the start

I think perhaps the worst thing about returning every year to ride Six Gap is that the ride just crushes one's illusions. This was my tenth trip to Dahlonega and I can confirm that it didn't get any easier since last year.

As I have for the past few years, I went up with the Tulane riders of which there were eight. A couple of them weren't able to leave until 8 am on Saturday, and I knew that was going to make it difficult to arrive by the 6 pm deadline to pick up packets that evening. Complicating things a bit was the fact that we would be taking two of the Tulane motor pool vans that are equipped with GPS tracking, so it would be like having Big Brother looking over you shoulder at the speedometer. Fortunately, the weather was great all weekend and everyone arrived on time. The nine-hour drive went pretty well, although since we were pressed for time, lunch was a quick stop at a Subway for to-go sandwiches. Grayson was driving his own car ahead of us a bit, and we were all in communication via Zello. We were lagging behind the other van by maybe ten minutes, and as we approached Atlanta, Google Maps was initially showing an estimated arrival time right at 6 pm. That soon became 6:01, and then 6:02, and so on. Fortunately, Grayson talked the folks up there into waiting a few extra minutes for us, so when we finally arrived at maybe 6:10 we jumped out of the van and grabbed our packets immediately. I was particularly  happy to find that the bike shop tent at the Expo was still up, and, even better, they had a bottle of Montana Huckleberry HammerGel. I'd run out of it at home and was afraid I'd have to survive on Powerbars, so this was a great relief!

After picking up packets we went straight over to Pueblo's for dinner, and then made the 20-minute drive to Cleveland, GA (who knew there was a Cleveland in Georgia?) where we checked into a rather sketchy Knight's Inn along with a bunch of power company linemen. The room itself wasn't too bad, other than the soft spot in the floor and air-conditioner that seemed to be turning itself on and off randomly all night. Can't say I got a lot of sleep. Anyway, we were up early enough to go next-door to Dunkin Donuts for some coffee and donuts before heading back to Dahlonega. Of course it was still dark since we knew we had to get there by at least 6:30 to get a good parking spot in the school lot. That worked out really well. By the time the sun was starting to come up we headed down to the line for the 7:30 am start. We had 7 riders doing 6-Gap, one doing 3-Gap, and one doing the Valley Ride. The start was the usual scramble, and I pretty quickly lost track of the rest of the group, most of which were up closer to the front. I had done something bad to my back, probably when loading up the van, and was getting sharp pain on one side when I twisted just the right way, so I was being really careful not to do that. Even so, I wondered if it was going to turn into a show-stopper at some point during the ride.

Louisiana riders at 6-Gap

Soon enough I found myself in a pretty large group that was a bit behind the equally large lead group as we approached the first climbs. My legs were feeling pretty good and as usual I didn't have much trouble on the first couple of Gaps, although I was being a little conservative since I knew what was still to come. By the top of Jack's Gap, the first real climb, Grayson, Cameron, and Elliott were way, way up the road somewhere and Steve was somewhere ahead as well. I was fairly comfortable in the 39x25 and 39x27 for this climb as well as for the next one, but I knew that the longer, steeper sections of Hogpen were going to be a problem. After coming down Unicoi I caught up with Steve and we went up Hogpen in sight of each other at the blazing average speed of 8.3 mph for 45 minutes. Here, I was wishing I'd sprung for a cassette with a 29 as there were many times when my Garmin was auto-pausing (the speed sensor isn't working so the speed really jumps around when I'm in single digits like that!). Steve stopped at the rest stop, but I didn't, so that was the last I saw of him until afterward. After trudging up Wolfpen at 7.6 mph, I stopped to fill a water bottle and down a little cup of Coke, where I found Grayson and Cameron who had been stopping at the rest stops a lot, apparently. Elliott was already way up the road somewhere. We rode the downhill from Wolfpen, with a little group coming together at the bottom, but when the next section of climbing started I had to let them go. After the relatively short final climb up Woody Gap, I enjoyed the long downhill with the super-sharp 180 at the bottom and finally looked the clock. It was impossible to make it in under 6 hours for sure, but my legs were still functional, so although I was alone in a headwind I kind of pushed it for the final ten miles, rolling across the finish with 6:13 riding time on my Garmin and an official clock time of 6:15, which was essentially the same as last year. It was particularly encouraging to see that three of the Tulane riders, Grayson, Elliott, and Cameron, posted ride times well under 6 hours this year. It was also good that we had two new women riders making the trip. Kaitlyn did a pretty good 3-Gap time despite riding with a broken cleat, and I think Lucia had a nice time doing the Valley ride on her hybrid bike even though the handlebars slipped and she had to get someone at the rest stop to fix them. Meanwhile, Stan Prutz, who had just returned from doing three of those Haute stage races back-to-back in Europe, rode in at 5:38 which was of course the fastest time in the 55-98 age group and 37th overall.

The ride home was, for a change, uneventful. We didn't have to drive through any blinding rainstorms, there were no frantic midnight searches for gas stations that would take Tulane's fuel card, and even though we were stopped for about half an hour because of a major accident that shut down the Interstate, we still got back to New Orleans around 12:30 am or so, and that was driving with cruise control set at or slightly below the speed limit practically the whole way. Today I'm really feeling it, though. My back is sore, my quads are sore, and even my triceps are sore. So, basically situation normal. I went out for an easy 20 miles on the levee this morning just to spin the legs and was happy to see an eagle, which is a sure sign that Fall is coming - eventually.

Visitors

Thursday on the levee, heading back from the turnaround.    

The awesome cooler weather that graced us with a nice long visit recently was great, until it wasn't any more, which was around last Wednesday. The evening before, I'd gotten together for dinner at High Hat with Roger Brown, a high-school classmate from Jesuit who was visiting town from Chicago. That morning I went out in the really, really dark and met the WeMoRi which for some reason didn't seem to be killing it as much as usual. With an early meeting at work I had to skip my usual twenty minutes of lounging around at Starbucks and instead rushed through a quick shower and pedaled off to work, once again beating the odds by not getting run over by any cars, trucks, buses or dumbass wannabe "track" cyclists commuting on brakeless fix-gear bikes with time trial handlebars set so far forward it would make Graeme Obree cringe.

Ripped that thing right off with my awesome arm power.

That evening Rich Hirschinger, visiting from L.A., came over to borrow a bike while he was in town for a conference. Rich rides with the Velo Club la Grange, so I was particularly pleased to be able to repay the club in some small way for lending me a bike some years back when I was in L.A. for about a week watching Danielle's UI team compete at gymnastics nationals. Also, he's a Tulane Biology alumnus. Anyway, as I was removing the Keo pedals from my Orbea in order to install Rich's Speedplays, I inadvertently ripped my Thompson seatpost apart with my awesome upper body strength. Oops. Fortunately, it was easy to resort to Plan B, which was to set him up on the old Cervelo instead. That worked out OK, although the shifters are so worn out and finicky that there was a time or two when he couldn't shift into a high gear when he needed it, at least until I explained to him the secret handshake required.

Rich came out for the Thursday levee ride, which was nice and smooth and uneventful. By then you could feel the humidity moving back into the city, and I knew that our brief respite from summer would soon be over. Afterward we stopped for coffee at Zotz and I filled him in on the Tulane Friday Coffee Ride and Sunday Giro Ride info, since he was planning on making both of those. I also mentioned that U2 was in town for a concert and I think he'd snagged tickets within about an hour of that. He did show up Friday morning for the Tulane ride, which included a coffee stop at Fair Grinds. That evening I went out to the Airport to pick up Danielle who was finally coming back for the semester.

Ray and I got back a good five minutes before the lazy puncture-ridden main group. No, we weren't going that fast.

The Saturday morning Giro was a little messy. There are a lot of rides and things going on this time of year, including the Pensacola stage race, so although there was a good-sized group on hand, we were missing a few of the regulars. Anyway, that didn't keep things from getting fast on Hayne Blvd. Unfortunately, it remained fast after the turn onto Paris Road where they are doing all sorts of road construction that forces us to ride through some bad patches of asphalt, so of course someone pinch-flatted. Most of us waited, although a small group kept going, never to be seen again since they didn't wait around at the turnaround. As we started back, Ray and I rolled casually ahead as the rest of the group emerged from the shade of the pee-pee tree and attempted to avoid having to actually pedal their bikes. Soon, our pace started creeping up and before I knew it we were in 2-man time trial mode, which in this case was more like 1.5-man time trial mode, with me taking much shorter pulls than Ray. The whole time I'm expecting the group to come flying by at like 30 mph, but every time I looked back I saw nothing but empty road. So we went all the way to the turn-off onto the service road, at which point we eased up. We were all the way to Hayne Blvd. before I could see the group starting to approach from behind, and then they were gone again -- someone had flatted.  So we ended up riding the entire way back alone. I turned around on Lakeshore Drive and went all the way back to the fountain before finding the remnant of the main group. Strange Giro.

Heading out for the Sunday Giro

Sunday's Giro had a particularly small group, which of course meant there weren't as many places to hide from the wind. We had a nice paceline going most of the way out on Chef Highway, which was nice, but by 8 am it was clear that the summer humidity was back in full force. Unaccustomed to this level of humidity, Rich was going through his water at a fairly rapid rate, and as the pace ramped up on the return trip I could see that he was starting to suffer a bit. When it got fast leading up to the Goodyear Sign sprint on Chef Highway, Rich came off the back with a couple others. It turned out that my old Campi 9-speed shifter wouldn't give him access to anything smaller than the fifteen tooth cog because he didn't know the trick of pushing the paddle lever all the way out so the worn-out shifter could complete the earlier shift. I sent the other Rich ahead to slow the front of the group so I could make sure he didn't miss the turn onto the service road, at which point I told him how to make the thing actually shift. I guess those shifters have, conservatively, 40,000 miles on them.

Next weekend is Six Gap, so assuming that the Tulane guys get things lined up travel-wise and we're actually going, I figure I will be taking it easy this week. Regardless, I think the legs are probably due for a little recovery time.

Weather Here and There

A very mixed MS Tour Training Ride group

The cold front that saved most of the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Irma ushered in a long stretch of fairly spectacular weather that we don't usually see until closer to October. Of course, it was all accompanied by brisk northerly winds, but under the circumstances I'm not complaining. I spend much of the weekend watching the Weather Channel and having flash-backs from 2005, but got to enjoy some nice weekend rides.

Saturday was the usual Giro Ride. As I rode out to Starbucks that morning I paused to zip up my jersey since it was a relatively frigid 72 degrees. They've been doing a bunch of re-paving work along Hayne Blvd. lately and it seems like every time we ride through there somebody flats or something. On Saturday, somewhere between Hayne and the Interstate (is that technically Hayne, or Paris Rd.?) Jaden hit a hole hard enough to dislodge his water bottle and jam it between his wheel and chainstay before ejecting it. All I saw was a water bottle go flying that I nearly hit. A few of us slowed down thinking someone had flatted, but the front of the group kept going. As it turned out, Jaden had tweaked his rear wheel and started heading back home. At that point Woody and a couple others who had stopped with Jaden caught up to me as I was soft-pedaling up the overpass and we started trying to chase back to the group. Most of them had slowed down so we made contact back on Chef Highway without too much of a problem. In a way I was kind of disappointed because I'd been hoping for a nice team time-trial with a group of four or five all the way out to Venetian Isles. Anyway, Jaden apparently changed his mind and turned back around and met up with us at Venetian where borrowed a multi-tool to, I think, loosen up his aero rear brake so it would't rub on his now-wavy rear wheel. It was a fairly fast Giro, regardless, and other than the wind, the weather was perfect.

Nice day, nice roads

On Sunday we had a small group that met up at Lee Road Middle School for a northshore ride. There was a MS Tour training ride scheduled to leave from there at 8:00, so we planned on leaving at 7:45. We were late, and then we turned back because Jaden and Stephen who had started with us suddenly disappeared. Apparently they had decided to do the MS tour route instead. Our route was basically the same for the first twenty miles, so shortly after we got going we were caught by a fairly big group that had left at 8:00. We merged in with them until we turned off onto Choctaw Road. At that point it was just Steve, Pat and me. I was determined to get in some intensity here and there, which Pat wasn't too interested in, so Steve and I spend some time pushing it up ahead and then circling back to pick  up Pat. He was never more than a minute behind, so it wasn't a problem at all. When we got back to Lee Road for the final five miles or so we saw Jim coming the other way. He had intended to go with us but had missed the turn so had finished with the MS tour group and then headed back to find us. He turned around and went to the front and dragged us in the last few miles. All-in-all it was a great ride with spectacular weather.

Historical marker at the top of our loop

Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma was already starting to diminish after slamming through the Keys and tracking up the east side of Florida. My brother and family in Orlando lost power around 7 pm on Sunday night but otherwise everything was OK over there. There are a number of folks in New Orleans from places like Tampa right now, but I guess they will be anxious to return home as soon as they can. It looks like much of Florida was spared the worst-case scenario that, for a while, was looking like a real possibility.

Three in a Row

A turbulent world.  

I woke up, briefly, around midnight to thunder and lightning. It was the welcome cold front that will, we are assuming, save us here in Louisiana from the approaching hurricanes. Yes.  Plural. The air was noticeably cooler than usual this morning when I went out in the dark to meet up with the WeMoRi group on the Lakefront. That's if you can call 75F cool, which I definitely can. Of course, there was also a north wind. With some lingering cloud cover, it remained dark for a long time this morning, and with various sections of street lights along Lakeshore Drive out, I was glad I'd added a second rear light to the bike before leaving. I hovered around in the darkness between Marconi and Shelter #2 for a while until I saw the cluster of blinky lights coming and rushed to make the turn back onto Marconi before being absorbed into the group, which this morning meant hanging onto the tail end and sprinting onto Robert E. Lee to close a gap before finally catching my breath halfway down Wisner.

An hour later, sitting at Starbucks with my cup of coffee, I checked Mike's Weather Page to see what the latest was on Irma. The morning forecast models had shifted it a bit to the east, but I knew they couldn't really be trusted quite yet. Still, it was comforting to know that the cold front had moved through as expected and the models were still in agreement about the rather dramatic turn to the north on Saturday. Hopefully by the time it gets up to the Orlando area where my brother lives it will have lost some intensity. By afternoon we had three named hurricanes all in a row. Irma's the big one, still at Category 5, and trailing behind it out in the Atlantic is Jose which is expected to turn north well before reaching us (we hope). Over in the western Gulf, Katia has just been upgraded to a hurricane and is heading into Mexico. Looks like we're going to luck out on all three of these this time around. We now have a FB page for the Cajun Airlift - a bunch of pilots that seem to be loosely connected with the Commemorative Air Force who have been airlifting supplies into the areas affected most by Hurricane Harvey and who are expecting to be needed again in Florida. It looks like the BVI, Puerto Rico and Cuba will be hit pretty hard first, and it looks quite bad for a lot of the Bahamas. The only good news is that the hurricane is moving fairly fast, currently at 16 mph.

Labor Day Weekend Rides - Cat. 5 is Bad

A few of the Tulane riders on the Independence ride

Finally a few days without rain in the forecast. Sitting at Pagoda Cafe with the Tulane group on Friday morning I learned that they were planning a ride up in Independence for Saturday. Feeling the need to get out in the country a bit, I decided to tag along. Quentin, Elliot and I headed out right on time for the one-hour drive, parking along the railroad tracks near the BBQ place where we'd later have lunch.

First TUCA ride of the semester

The ride turned out to be a pretty steady 58 miles, a bit shorter and easier than I'd expected but still a good ride. The first hour or so felt almost cool, which is to say it was below 80F. For a minute or two I thought I could see Fall coming, but an hour later when the temperature was approaching 90 I realized it was just wishful thinking. I felt pretty good on this ride, probably thanks to the prior week's rain and resulting reduced mileage and intensity. It didn't seem like any of the riders were ever in difficulty, so I'll take that as a good sign for the team. By the time we got back it was good and hot, and I was glad to be able to sit down in the air-conditioning for a quick lunch before hitting the road back to New Orleans. That evening we walked over to the Tulane stadium to watch the season opener against Grambling. Tulane won the game pretty convincingly, although Grambling's band most definitely won half-time.  It was rather sad seeing the tiny Tulane band sitting in the end zone waiting for the huge Grambling band to finish its performance.

Giro Ride heads out along Lakeshore Drive

Sunday was a Giro Ride day and pretty uneventful. The pace was fairly moderate, relatively speaking, with an average speed just under 23 mph and a very brief max of around 40. I wasn't feeling much of an effect from the prior day's ride in the hills, so I guess that was good.

Monday turned out to be a holiday Giro Ride. Nobody seemed interested in organizing anything special for Labor Day, which I guess was OK, although I might have been easily convinced to do a northshore ride if something like that had materialized. We had a brief stop on Haynes Blvd. when Noel flatted, but otherwise it was steady and reasonably fast on the way out and about half of the way back. Things got kind of conversational toward the end of the ride, though, at least until we got close to the overpasses where it sped up. Naturally, there was a nice little sprint to the top of the Seabrook bridge. Along Lakeshore Drive Taco started rolling off the front as we were cooling down and I eventually made the effort to catch up to him for the ride back uptown which turned out to be a little faster than usual for some reason. This morning's long levee ride started with only three of us, although we picked up a few more along the way. Somewhere out around Kenner, Dustin Ducote's headlight suddenly disconnected and hit the ground, so we waited for him to retrieve it. Then, as we were going down "the dip" his rear tire went flat. We continued on, though, planning to pick him up on the way back. Heading back we came upon him on the side of the bike path with his bike upside-down fixing another flat. He was not having a good day.

So Hurricane Irma is looking worse and worse. It's now a Cat. 5, which is bad in both cycling and hurricanes, but for very different reasons. The forecast track keeps shifting south and west, which is bad for us. Our only hope is the on-time arrival of a cold front later this week that should force it to turn north. Unfortunately, it's looking more and more like that turn won't happen until it's on top of Florida. Although the jury's still out as to whether it will track up the east of west coast of Florida, there's not much doubt that it will be one or the other. I guess we'll have a better picture by Thursday or so. My instinct keeps telling me that this thing is going to enter the Gulf, however. When hurricanes get to be that big and strong they start making their own weather and not responding the way the forecast models predict. If it remains Category 5 and hits Florida it will not be good at all.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking I'll do Six Gap again in a few weeks, followed by the last road race up in Shreveport. I could possibly make the Pensacola stage race the 16th and 17th, but that would make three long road trips in the same month and I'm not sure I'm quite up to that. We'll see. Stranger things have happened.

Creole Navy and What's Coming Next

The rain bike has been getting a lot of miles lately.

Hurricane Harvey missed New Orleans but as everyone knows, it caused catastrophic flooding in south Texas and southwest Louisiana. Here in town we've had a lot of unpredictable scattered rain but nothing serious at all. I skipped riding on Monday because of the rain, but managed to get in a couple of rides on Tuesday and Wednesday, thanks to the Rain Bike, Weather.com, and some lucky lulls in the rain. Yesterday I went out on the old Pennine and was way out in Kenner when I noticed the front tire going soft. I really didn't want to have to change a flat since everything was pretty wet and nasty, so I nursed it all the way back home, which was over ten miles at that point. Somehow I made it back before the rim started hitting the ground. This morning there were just three of us who showed up for the Thursday levee ride, and one turned off for home as soon as a few raindrops fell. It was fairly windy, but we never did get any significant rain, although ten minutes after I got home it poured for a few minutes. That made three days of lucky timing.

What's coming next - Hurricane Irma.

Meanwhile, I've been getting regular reports and videos on Facebook from Kenny Bellau who went over to southeast Texas around Nederland, I think, along with a number of others, including Chris Harvey and Eddie Exposito, to help with the rescue efforts and bring as many stranded people and animals to dry land as possible.

Kenny and one of the smaller rescues

The have been called the Creole Navy, and someone has now set up a fundraising page to help cover some of their expenses, so drop them a few bucks to help out. It looks like the flooding was still pretty severe as of yesterday, despite the fact that the hurricane has finally moved on to the northeast. The photos from inside homes look a lot like those from Katrina, but fortunately the fatalities seem to have been much lower.

With Harvey pretty much out of the picture for us now, we are focusing our attention on What's Coming Next, which is Hurricane Irma.  This one is already a major hurricane even though it's still about ten days out from us. I'm a little worried about this one, but of course a lot could change between now and when it gets close to Florida.

Lots of wet dogs and people
happy to get a lift to dry land

This one could possibly affect the Pensacola Stage Race scheduled for Sept. 16-17 if it gets into the Gulf, but it's way too early to tell right now. The last LAMBRA road race isn't until the end of September and is up in Shreveport, so that shouldn't be a problem. In-between, though, are a few events like the Tour of Jefferson ride on Sept. 10 and the Tour of Tangipahoa the following weekend. There's also the Six Gap Century up in Georgia on Sept. 24. Anyway, we're all just hoping for the best at this point. I'll breathe a lot easier if we can get through the next three weeks without a major storm to deal with.

Outnumbered

Nice photo of the rest of the masters field coming over "the hill" after the breaks were up the road.

Road racing is often a numbers game. Unless you're one of the pack supermen who can ride away from everyone at will, success often depends on the help of your teammates, or, lacking same, a loose and temporary and sometimes unreliable confederation of otherwise outnumbered riders. The effect of the numbers game is greatly magnified when the field size is small. Yesterday, the field was small.

Masters start, Alex launches

Sunday was the LAMBRA road championship up in Flora, Mississippi where it, thankfully, wasn't raining or flooding or hurricaning. I drove up late Saturday afternoon since I unexpectedly had access to the car because Candy's weekend conference in Baton Rouge had been cancelled because of Hurricane Harvey. I'd be helping out with officiating for the 8 am wave of races, and then riding the Masters race at 10:30. Arriving at the start early on Sunday Townsend and I got things set up for registration as Ricky and Mike A. started setting up the cameras and Mike M., Robert L. and numerous volunteers got the course signage, flags, etc. set up. They sky was overcast and it was humid, but the wind was light, the chance of significant rain low, and the temperature reasonable, at least for August in Mississippi. After getting the first three races done, I changed into my riding clothes, strapped on the helmet and did about one mile of warmup before going to the start line. Things were already not looking too favorable. Cspire had three riders; Acadiana had five. Between them, they comprised half the field. Steve Johnson and I represented NOBC. I think everyone else was essentially without teamates. The course was a bit over 11 miles and we'd be doing five laps, finishing with a fast flat stretch right after a slight downhill section. To complicate things a bit, the 40+ and 55+ groups were combined, and about half the field was 55+. In situations like that you never know who is going to chase who and who is going to block for whom.

Woody & Alex

From the gun, Alex (Acadiana) attacked and of course opened a big gap by the time most riders were clipped in. I figured if he could stay out there for 57 miles solo he deserved a gold medal. Once the pack got rolling you could tell that Alex wasn't pulling away very much, so I wasn't too concerned about it. Of course, none of the Acadiana guys would do anything but soft-pedal at the front, but there were enough others occasionally rolling through to keep the gap from growing. We were at least halfway through the first lap when suddenly Woody went flying out of the group on the right. Alex was only maybe 30 seconds up the road, so definitely within range for someone like Woody. I was stuck over on the left up against the centerline. Well of course at this point both the Acadiana guys and the Cspire guys, who were on the front at the time, stopped pedaling. I knew that if Woody got together with Alex they would probably be able to stay away, given the blockade potential. For the next couple of laps there were enough occasional efforts getting through to the front to keep the duo in sight, but in-between the blocking would slow the group down into the teens so the gap was slowly expanding. There were probably only three people willing to do any work at this point, so not enough to sustain the steady speeds that would be needed to bring them back.

I guess we were on about the third lap, about 35 miles into the race, when someone at the front made the dastardly decision to attack the friggin' feed zone, which is about the lowest thing you can do in a road race. I was toward the back going about 18 mph at the time, trying to stay as far away from people grasping for slippery bottled water as I could when I looked up and saw the attack and said under my breath "What the F*^k!" Three riders at the front quickly opened a gap. The group was immediately all strung out and I had to make a big effort just to make contact with the back of what was left of it. I caught my breath, complained to Steve, and made my way to the front to try and get a chase going. Fortunately there were a few others who were willing to take a pull or two, and after a pretty big effort with Steve, me, Peter, and even Rick we rolled up to the back of the break, but many matches had been burned in the process. Just before we caught I said to Peter, who was in front of the chase, something like, "get ready to go!" No sooner had the words gotten out of my mouth, Kevin (Acadiana) and Michael (Cspire) launched the entirely predictable counter-attack to which the rest of us who weren't on one of those teams couldn't really mount much of a response since we were still gassed from chasing while those guys sat on. This is where having a couple of teammates in reserve would have saved the day. Without any reinforcements (I think we'd dropped a few riders at that point), it was a little while before we could really get going again, but the chase was again sporadic thanks to blocking by the remaining Acadiana and Cspire riders. Even so, at one point, with me offering some verbal "encouragement," we got to within maybe ten seconds of the duo, but when I pulled off the front, exhausted, for someone to come through, all I heard was the sound of freewheels. There are two things you never, ever want to hear when you pull off the front of a paceline.  One is the sound of someone shifting to a larger gear.  The other is the sound of freewheeling.  At that point Steve said we may as well just save our legs for the finish.

Kevin & Mike

The next lap was rather painfully boring and pretty slow as the Acadiana guys sat on the front and I tried to recover a bit from the earlier efforts, and nobody else was interested in racing. I guess I should mention that Steve and I didn't really, you know, technically, have any good reason to be chasing the four guys who were off the front since they were all in the 40+ age group, but you know I always have a problem riding like that. Finally, when we got about half-way around on the final lap, things started to pick up a bit. Butch (Acadiana), who is 55+, launched a few attacks on the rolling hills hoping to dislodge some people (especially me, I suppose) before the sprint. While I didn't have any problem staying with him, and in retrospect would have been wise to have counter-attacked in hopes of splitting what was left of the pack, I was not feeling confident about the sprint at all. I knew it was going to be a high-speed drag race from the final curve, which is not exactly my forte. As things started ramping up for the sprint, Steve let me take Butch's wheel. We came around the final slightly downhill curve at 31 mph with me glued to Butch, which is pretty much where I remained as he and Peter sprinted for the line at a final speed of about 38 mph. I think I was in the 11 by the time we rounded the curve 175 meters from the line, which was of absolutely no help whatsoever as I never made up another inch on Butch.

The sprint for 5th, or 1st, depending on your age - Butch is out of the frame on the right ahead of me.

Anyway, I ended up 2nd in the extremely old men category, but a somewhat disappointing 7th among the regular old men.

NOBC 4s in control

Meanwhile, the NOBC Cat. 4 team of Christian Fontaine, Branden Morvant, Adam Layburn, Andrew Do, and Travis Berger made an excellent team effort that got Branden within a hair's width of the win in a tight sprint against Will Buquoi. At 22 riders, that was the largest field of the day, which might ordinarily seem pretty bad, but considering that the race was pulled together on pretty short notice, and was the week that classes were starting at a lot of universities, and there was a hurricane tearing up Houston and possibly heading toward Louisiana, it wasn't too bad. Total turnout was 73, with predictably very low turnouts for Cat. 5s and Women. Surprisingly, there were seven Juniors, so there's hope!

The event itself went off quite well and was a lot of fun, thanks in no small part to the folks like Robert Lee, Townsend Myers, Mike MacGown, Scott Kuppersmith (who won the Cat. 1-2 race), our officials Ricky Dunn, Mike Abshire, motorefs Ian and Dean, and a whole lot of volunteers that Mike MacGown somehow rounded up from the local clubs. The course, while certainly not the most difficult we've had for this event, seemed to get good marks from the riders. It's just hilly enough to offer some opportunities for the stronger riders, but easy enough that newer riders shouldn't be intimidated.

Photos mostly by Kirk Giessinger.

Hurricane Season

Hoping for the best for Corpus Christi to Houston tomorrow.

It's been almost twelve years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29 of 2005. The Saturday before it hit, I wrote, "I think this is going to be bad." Although I am often wrong, that time I wasn't. So here we are looking at another rapidly intensifying hurricane, this time farther to the west of us, that the models are having a hard time dealing with beyond tomorrow. Despite the uncertainty, however, there seems to be an increasing possibility that it could back up into the Gulf a bit and drift farther in our direction before heading inland again. That could be bad, especially if it brings a big tidal surge and long and heavy rainfall. Of course, in the midst of it, we are holding our LAMBRA road race championship on Sunday over in Jackson MS. By all indications, there shouldn't be any severe weather for that. It's looking like it would be Tuesday before that's a real possibility. Even so, it's definitely something to monitor.

This is a little concerning for us.

It's an interesting coincidence that this week I have been working on summarizing some of the history about Tulane's rebuilding efforts and the federal funding and reimbursements that the university received to cover a lot of that. Even this far out, it seems that the Katrina story still isn't finished. As the years have gone by, some have forgotten, and others never even knew, the extreme sense of urgency and extraordinary efforts that allowed the university to re-open that January. For a while, there was the very real possibility that it wouldn't happen, that the medical school and hospital would be shut down permanently, and that there would be even more massive layoffs than there were. Since the university was at the time, and still is, the largest private employer in the city, it would have been a major blow. Now, many years afterward, that doesn't seem to matter much to some federal bureaucrats who probably watched it on TV from their dorm rooms as if it was all just some reality show.  Just a few weeks ago they quietly removed Kenny Bellau's Katrina boat display from under the Cabildo in Jackson Square. So a lot of hurricane-related things seem to have come together recently - the flooding a few weeks ago and the broken pumping system, lingering Katrina federal funding issues, Hurricane Harvey, Kenny's boat, etc.  But I digress.....

Quietly removed from the Cabildo recently

Actually, I'm not too worried about this one, at least not yet. Despite all of the gloom and doom surrounding the New Orleans drainage pumps and the Sewerage and Water Board, the city is probably in far better shape to handle storm surge and heavy rainfall than it was twelve years ago, or ever. There are massive new levees and gigantic floodgates and pumping systems and generators and stockpiled fuel to get rainwater over closed floodgates, none of which existed in '05. On the plus side, I'm looking at the weather out in the Atlantic and not seeing anything that's a threat. If we can get through the next three weeks or so, the chances of a major hurricane making it here start to go down dramatically.

This morning I did the first Tulane coffee ride of the semester with Grayson and Elliot. It was actually a little premature since most students will be moving in today and over the weekend, so it wasn't surprising that there were just the three of us. As I rode past the stadiums and athletic facilities there were lots of student athletes around. They are usually required to help with move-in day, so I guess that had something to do with it. There was a pretty good northeast wind blowing on the lakefront today and it felt just a tiny bit like Fall weather. Of course we won't see anything remotely like cool temperatures for another couple of months, but one thing about early morning rides is that you always seem to get a few of these early seasonal premonitions.

A Week's Worth

Perfectly sized group for a training ride on the northsore

In the office not feeling too good. Perhaps I'm coming down with something, or maybe I'm just a little worn out and need a little down time. Whatever, I figured I'd update the blog rather than dig back into the ten years of back-and-forth audit stuff I've been rather unsuccessfully trying to summarize for the past couple of days.

Last week was a pretty solid training week for me. I logged nearly 300 miles and, more importantly, a fair amount of intensity. Down here in New Orleans it's been either hot or raining or both, so being able to get in my regular weekday training rides without incident was just dumb luck, I guess.

Saturday Giro warm-up along Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans

On Saturday I did the usual Giro Ride, which turned out to be pretty fast. With a little tailwind on the way out, the group was going faster than normal almost from the beginning. Once we came down onto Hayne Blvd. the speed ramped up quickly into the 28-30 mph range and just stayed there. I hate those first few miles on Hayne. There are a bunch of dangerous lengthwise seams in the concrete that you can't see until you're on top of them, even if you aren't cross-eyed and glued to the wheel of someone a foot taller than yourself and going 30 mph with sweat dripping into your glasses. I usually end up riding more or less in the wind just so I can see what's coming, but on Saturday it eventually came down to "trust the wheel in front of you or be dropped." The average speed for the 5-mile stretch of Hayne Blvd. was 28.6 mph. It didn't slow down much after that, so the subsequent 7-mile stretch of Chef Menteur showed an average of 28.8. After a quick turnaround, the ride back into the wind was slower but not a whole lot easier, and we were back on Lakeshore Drive by 9 am. I was planning on doing a northshore ride the next day and knew I'd be feeling Saturday's ride on Sunday.

Sunday morning I threw the bike in to the car and headed for Lee Road Junior High to meet what I figured would be a small but determined group for a 65 mile training ride. Despite the prior day's effort, I was determined to put some effort into the ride, so at least I was prepared to suffer a bit.  There was a big MS Tour training ride starting from the same location at 8 am (we'd planned to start at 7:30 to avoid them), and I was surprised to find so many people already there when I arrived around 7:00. We rolled out just a minute or two after 7:30 with six or seven riders to do the standard winter training ride route up past Enon and back around through Plainview.

The first fifteen miles or so were surprisingly comfortable. We were rolling along in a nice smooth paceline for the most part, at 20-22 mph, and with the slightly drier air and shade from the trees it felt absolutely cool. It was nice while it lasted. Once we got to the top of the course around 30 miles in, and headed back toward the south we lost the shade and kind of put the hammer down. That 15 mile stretch is pretty much the traditional sprint zone for this ride where we don't take any prisoners, regrouping only at the other end on Sie Jenkins Road. So we pushed the pace along there, up and down the three significant hills, spending a fair amount of time in the 25-28 mph range. Along the way we lost Pat and Mignon, so at the end of Sie Jenkins Road we stopped and I turned back. I figured they should be maybe two minutes back, but after riding a while I still wasn't seeing any sign of them. That's about when I got a text from Pat saying that Mignon had flatted. I tried to reply but my phone and hands were so sweaty I couldn't get it to work, but Kyle had better luck. Anyway, we found them a little farther down Sie Jenkins, thankfully in the shade. We stopped for water after turning off of Sie Jenkins Road (Jim had left his bottles at his car, so he had just my small bottle and was probably already getting pretty dehydrated). We stayed together for Hwy. 60 and South Choctaw, and Dummyline through Enon, where we stopped again for fluids, and then of course we had to make an effort on the climb up to the fire tower. After that I was starting to fade at a logarithmic pace, taking shorter and shorter pulls. Kyle, on the other hand, started taking longer and longer pulls at seemingly faster and faster speeds. For the last few miles it was all I could to do stay on his wheel. Anyway, it was a good training ride and a good end to a solid week.

What's coming this weekend

Meanwhile, we have been planning the LAMBRA road championships for next weekend and carefully watching the weather. There's a Tropical Storm named Harvey out in the Gulf, and the forecast models are having a really hard time predicting where it will go, or when it will make landfall, because there isn't much other weather to steer it. At the moment it's looking like we'll be OK for the road race on Sunday up around Jackson MS, although rain is certainly a possibility. Actually, for a road race in August, a little rain isn't such a bad thing at all. I'll be going up early to help officiate the first wave of races that start at 8 am, and then I'll be riding the master's race at 10:30. Hopefully the weather won't scare too many people away. I'm not expecting a huge turnout anyway since there's always a lot going on this time of year. I'm hoping to be able to drive up Saturday night so I don't have to make the three hour drive at 4 am on Sunday.

Minutes after uploading the earlier storm track, Harvey was upgraded to a hurricane.

Yesterday I did the WeMoRi, getting there almost early enough to do the entire ride start to finish with the group. The speeds were kind of all over the place for that ride, but at the end I found myself on a good wheel and although Woody was already like ten bike lengths off the front at 200 meters I went ahead to sprinted. When he was about 50 meters from the end I saw him ease up for a moment and look back, but when he saw me still coming he put his head down and powered the rest of the way. That short effort with a little tailwind got me up over 38 mph, so I was happy with that. This morning I was feeling pretty lousy, still am, and decided from the start I was going to try and take it easy for the long Thursday ride on the levee. Even so, it felt hard to me, and I still feel like something's not right, so I'm about to take some Ibuprofen and hope for the best.

Current Stats:

• Sempre Pro frame:  32,343 mi.
• Campi Shifters & Derailleurs:  52,696 mi.
• Bont Shoes:  26,855 mi.
• Year to Date Mileage (not counting commuting): 7,768 mi.